Reducing Environmental Impact

1. Reducing Environmental Impact

2. EPA’s View (from Life-Cycle Design Guidance Manual) • Environmental requirements should minimize: • raw materials consumption • energy consumption • waste generation • health and safety risks • ecological degradation Do you agree with this?

3. Green design • Waste prevention • Reduce: weight • toxicity • energy use • Extend: service life • Better materials management • Facilitate: remanufacturing • recycling • composting • energy recovery US Congressional View A congressional view on the issue is reflected in (or at least influenced by) the report "Green Products by Design – Choices for a Cleaner Environment" from the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA-E-541), published in October 1992. Green design consists of two complementary goals. Design for waste prevention avoids the generation of waste in the first place; design for better materials management facilitates the handling of products at the end of their service life. SOURCE: Office of Technology Assessment, 1992. Do you agree?

4. Policy Implications • The environmental evaluation of a product or design should not be based upon a single attribute, such as recyclability. • The trend toward increasing product complexity seems certain to make the environmental evaluation of products more difficult and expensive in the future. • Policies to encourage green design should be flexible enough to accommodate the rapid pace of technological change and the broad array of design choices and tradeoffs. • The biggest environmental gains will likely come from policies that provide incentives for greener production and consumption systems, not just greener products Based upon (inter)national studies, the Office of Technology Assessment states:

5. Guiding Principles according to OTA Principle 1: Identify the root problem and define it clearly. All the different perceptions on "the environmental problem" are not helping solving the problem. The tradeoffs and interactions between the problems have to be considered carefully. Principle 2: Give designers maximum flexibility that is consistent with solving the problem. Strict regulations and rigid Federal mandates will have adverse effects. Promote flexibility (in policies). Principle 3: Encourage a systems approach to green design. Don't just focus on the component, but look at the big picture. For example, German automakers are rethinking their entire "ecology" of car production and disposal.

6. A Classification of Environmental Impact Reduction Efforts From: Coulter, S., B.A. Bras and C. Foley (1995). A Lexicon of Green Engineering Terms, 10th International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED 95), V. Hubka Ed., Praha, Czech Republic, Heurista, Zurich, Switzerland, pp. 1033-1039. Bras, B., 1997, "Incorporating Environmental Issues in Product Realization," Industry and Environment, United Nations UNEP/IE (invited contribution), Vol. 20, No. 1-2 (double issue), pp. 7-13, 1997.

7. Classification • Three classes of approaches can be identified: • those which are applied within a single product life-cycle and focus on specific life-cycle stages, • those that focus on a complete product life-cycle and cover all life-cycle stages, and • those that go beyond single product life-cycles. Product Life-Cycle

8. Approaches Focusing on Specific Life-Cycle Stages • Traditional environmental engineering is concerned with managing the fate, transport, and control of contaminants in water supplies and discharges, air emissions, and solid wastes (after pollutants have been generated, or at the “end of the pipe”). • Pollution prevention usually focuses on elimination of pollutants from existing products and process technologies. • With the exception of Design for Environment, environmentally oriented Design for X approaches are all focused on a specific aspect of a product’s life-cycle (e.g., Design for Disassembly, Design for Recycling) • A danger of focusing too much on specific DFX approaches (or specific aspects of a product life-cycle in general) is that strong concentration on a single environmental aspect may negatively affect other aspects and render the product less environmental friendly as a whole.

9. Approaches Focusing on a Complete Product Life-Cycle • In Design for Environment, Life-Cycle Design, Environmentally Conscious Design and Manufacturing, and Green Design, the scope of considerations, both in terms of time and the environment, is the life cycle of one product. • All these approaches have similar goals and encourage a holistic product view. • However, it has already been recognized by many that this may not be enough. • For example, modern manufacturers often rely on multiple suppliers, have multiple product lines, multiple facilities, often in multiple countries.

10. ECDM, DFE, Life-Cycle Design, etc. • Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacture (ECDM) and other Design for Environment (DFE) efforts are largely motivated by a drive to reduce the (negative) impact of engineering systems (products, processes) on their environment. • Environmental impact occurs throughout a product’s life cycle by means of unwanted and unnecessary energy and material consumptions and emissions. • Design for Environment – “Systematic consideration of design performance with respect to environmental, health, and safety objectives over the full product and process life-cycle” (Joseph Fiksel, “Design for Environment – Creating Eco-Efficient Products and Processes”, McGraw-Hill, 1996). • Sustainable Development is considered the ultimate goal: • Economic growth that is in harmony with the environment

11. Approaches Going Beyond Single Product Life-Cycles • In industrial ecology, companies, organizations and communities work together to minimize environmental impact and use each others waste in an intelligent manner for creating new products. • Industrial ecology is not limited to a single product life cycle, but considers the interactions of several product life cycles (of possibly different lengths) over a larger time scale. • Sustainable development is the broadest but also the least well-defined approach in terms of tools and methods. • The United Nations’ World Commission on Environment and Development in their report Our Common Future, defines sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the needs of future generations.” • It is generally agreed that sustainable development requires at least pollution prevention, consideration of life-cycle consequences of production, and an approach that imitates natural or biological processes.